I run on the outside every time, but I don't think it's as significant as what you do right after picking up the robes. I can think of once when I got hit by a surprisingly quick follow up to his opening attack; that's why I think it's important to stay close to the altar and get the splash attack rather than one of the others. That seems to have a longer recovery time, and guarantee your safe escape at both <25% and <50% (although I have no idea why you'd go with the latter). The last part is apparently less relevant now that 2.0 DSfix is out.
Oh, nice. The IP pool is the system that propagates summons. So this should *in theory* mean less summon faileds.
One evening and 3 lord souls collected. The hard work for getting to Seath and the 4Ks were done already, but I had to sauntered through Lost Izalith and all that. I didn't bother with the dinosaur legs, too much of a pain. Went through the chaos covenant nonsense to get the next to last pyro spell. Did Seigmeyers last quest, saved solaire, and on to the bed of chaos. Artorias great shield certainly works wonders on those hands. Did the two glowy orb thingys on the first shot. Rolling down to the ramp and I died. Dark Souls. Died again on the ramp the next time! The third time the chaos flames killed me while I was slashing my way through the roots. Argh! I hate that. It feels so bullshitty because there's no defense (maybe some armor choices). The last time I did a jumping roll slash through the last set of branches when I heard a chaos storm go off. I killed the bed with the flying leap, but it killed me too. Argh! DARK SOULS! I was not robbed of my souls, though. When I went to my bloodstain they were there, which was nice. I had lost items to death before (I'm looking at you Demon Firesage). Got my last pyro from Quelana and ascended my flame to +2 (I never knew this before! I thought +15 was as high as it went! Dark Souls). Then I went to the 4K. Decided to use power within and lingering dragoncrest ring. That mean I needed some gear changes to take off havles and stay at < 50%. I went with the silver knight shield upgrade (somewhere between 1 and 4, I forget), BHK, no bow, and my light armor. First attempt I couldn't use power within cause I stupidly used a transient curse and forgot about it. Had enough success to get them down to 75% when I bit it. Emboldened I went back with the pyro strategy using combustion and some fire storms (IIRC). Had more success to 50%, but I noticed that the BKH did some real damage, too. 3rd times a charm, right? Back, even more success, but I got grabbed (lived to tell about it) and was healing when I got grabbed again. Knowing that tell it was off for another run. This time I killed them dead. I even had time off in between the 2/3 and 3/4 to heal, wait and wonder if/when my power within was going to wear off. Went to the tomb. Got all the loot I thing. Great shield + BKH + maggot helm + fog ring == easy mode. The giant dog skeletons were problematic. I tried to take them head on and they chewed through all my stamina. I got lucky a few times, but I was dumb and did not change my tactics and eventually died to one. Also died to the silver ring trap. Other than that I rolled them like a boss. Got to right outside Nito when I quit for the evening. Going for 4 lord souls in one evening is tempting fate too much. I need to think how I'm going to do this. Fog ring + BKH and go right at Nito, or divine Great Ax and take out the skeletons and then switch and go to Nito, or maybe some Pyro strategy. I love the DragonSlyer greatbow, it's really neat. One shot will flip an oyster on its back. But I'm terribly aware, at least in NG, that it's costing me souls to use. Using 3 arrows on a capra demon to get 900 back is not a wise investment, but it's so cool. Probably in NG+ it'll pay dividends.
I feel like the game could prevent this by factoring in the soul level value of your gear along with your actual soul level when matchmaking. If you want to be level 1 forever and have top gear, you're going to be pitted against similar guys and not griefing noobs who just started. Griefing is fine, but make it competitive.
I don't think griefing is fine, but I also don't think the asymmetries in the game benefit greatly from being mmorpg'd into artificial parity. In the end we are talking about a wholly different definition of "soul level" that requires a dramatic reengineering of how the game approaches balance for a problem that is mostly avoidable with existing mechanics. The main thing that can be done in my opinion is to change the level of information that is directly apparent to the player, even if it just comes down to less opaque descriptions for the multiplayer items that directly reference the paramaters the game uses to decide things. Now, if they want to build the next one around the "competitive" definition you have, well, that's their business. But it will be a very different game, and one that will require an enormous level of planning in order to accurately interpret what constitutes a competitive advantage.
Griefing is fine in the context of this game. The Gravelord Covenant is designed to grief other players. I rather like the vagueness of the item descriptions. It keeps with the whole discovery aspect of the game. If anything, that's the part I'd prefer they keep while they add more parity to the matchmaking. Regardless, this is still the best game ever made so we're just picking nits.
I'm not talking about things that appear to be griefing but are intended game mechanics working properly. For the purpose of what we are talking about here, it's the guy with the +5 pyro flame and maxed elemental weapons who (used to) Dark Wood Grain ring and giant armor and mask of the child to steamroll starting players in starting areas. It's safe to say that while that's not a forbidden outcome by the game's design, it's pretty far from fine in terms of the culture of the game's community. It's not quite as bad as hacking, but it's poor form at the least. So while I firmly believe that an experienced player who knows how the game mechanics work has everything he or she needs to survive that griefing threat, my main concern is that I don't think the information asymmetry between people who just play the game and people who talk about it on the internet forever is healthy in terms of how basic aspects of the game work. More on this in a minute. I actually don't know much about being Gravelorded or Gravelording because it has never worked properly or consistently for me on either end. It's a covenant that *maybe* now is somewhat functional, but primarily due to software and networking problems beyond the scope of the game's rules, it's hard to say what the balance of that aspect really looks like. For one thing, I find restricting gravelording to places where you haven't beaten the boss an interesting dimension to it that makes it a lot less appealing than Darkwraithing/Moon Covenanting, but possibly necessary to keep the populations manageable; necessarily, it also creates balance by forcing players into NG+ if they want end-game gear, which means the gravelorded players have a nifty potential advantage if they are wise in how they approach the counter invasion. Well, I will have to disagree with you there, depending on what you mean by it. I'm not wedded to using item descriptions per se, but something needs to describe clearly the ramifications of core choices you make, especially with PvP. I don't mean lore and I don't mean rewards and items and the like, but rather some marker for "by the way if you are human here's the level range of players that can invade you" or "you are a sinner now that you've done this". It could be as subtle as including mention of Soul Level in the reward for killing an invader or as part of the description when you are defeated by one, and in the case of the latter letting people know they are sinners is plenty of explanation in and of itself when something bad comes of it. A visual indicator of your immunity window from being invaded, so people know that's a thing rather than assuming they will just be griefed endlessly. And so on. These aren't things you should have to have other people talk to you about after you've already worked yourself up into a froth about how unfair the game is.It shouldn't be at this point in my time with the game that I actually kind of sort of maybe understand the actual level windows for covenants. In contrast, forcing more parity top-down on a system like DS seems to me an invitation to unintended consequences. Gear is always external to your level once you can use it and are able to get to it seems to me a core conceit of the game, in that the gating is in the difficulty of access primarily. But of course.
I'm cool with what you're saying for the most part, except for this statement. I suppose it is the crux of our disagreement. Since souls are both your currency and your experience points, it seems like there should be a way to factor your equipped gear into an effective power level number that includes your soul level. I realize many items are found or farmed, and not purchased with souls, but there is still a value there (I assume, but maybe there isn't! Frampt frampts everything for the same amount after all, perhaps there's no soul value behind these items). Maybe this is something they will consider for Dark Souls 2? I'm concerned about Hammet's experience mainly because I jumped on the Amazon $16 PS3 deal for my sister in-law for Christmas. She's a big time gamer, and she hasn't played Dark Souls. It's the most important game in the last 10 years (maybe 20, someone will throw Mario 64 at me and we can have that argument), and she needs to play it. I would hate for her to get frustrated by ninja flipping flaming dai-katana wielding Dark Wraiths while trying to get through the Undead Parish. Getting to that Bonfire before the Bell Gargoyles (near Sen's and the forest) is really when you're no longer a noob.
I simply read wallapuctus reply as something that would actually be more of a service for ALL players. Instead of the game recognizing only what your level is for who you'll be invading, it would keep track on your progress through the game through some other more meaningful means. Since "level" only indicates how many souls you've spent on stats, I imagine it wouldn't be crazy hard to add two more columns like "total souls gained" and something more, possibly to do with number of areas cleared or explored. This way the lvl 15 guy with starting gear and no upgrades would get invaded by players that might well run in circles around him but at least isn't wearing +10 gear, end-game spells and +5 lightning weapons. Those players would of course be more challenged (and have more fun) by knowing that the invadee has gear at least in the same ballpark as he has. So I see it more as a service to ALL players than an anti-griefing change. As Lizard King says, most of us know how to avoid getting griefed (even if some of us can't help themselves from frothing a bit at the mouth at the injustice of it all!!!!). And apologies if I put words in anyone's mouth here. Of course Dark Souls is the best thing ever. I just spent half an hour in Painted World trying out different outfits and taking screenshots for chrissakes. Edited to add I wrote this before reading the reply above here.
I don't really see much benefit in allowing someone equipped with gear cherry picked from throughout the game to invade a SL1 newbie. There's always going to be an inherent unbalance in invasions--the invader has chosen to invade and therefore is more likely to be geared for and experienced with PvP, while the invaded player might just be trying to summon help for the next boss. (A brilliant game mechanic, of course; the price for seeking help from other players is risking harm from them. Griefing both legitimized and constrained to an acceptable set of boundaries.) There's no reason to allow the invader to compound the imbalance through ridiculously outgearing his prey, however.
So what we really care about is: 1. Souls spent to upgrade equipment. 2. Souls spent leveling. 3. Souls spent to aquire spells and equipment. They are not ordered, but it seems to me the thing we fear most is the guy who went and grabbed the awesome gear and then upgraded it, and then leveled to a particular soul level to kill other people at that soul level who are in actuality much, much farther behind in the game. We could track souls spent from that stuff and filtered out keys and such, but there's still noise in that stat. If someone upgrades a lot of gear they'll have a higher investment level, though I'm not sure that's really noise as the person doing that is either new and a serial grinder or really savy. If the former, I think there are just some pvp cases we need to not care about. If the latter, I think we're trying to prevent that guy from fucking with the guys who are at the same soul level but way behind in all other aspects, right? Souls obtained is noisy for all of the above reasons + you can lose souls on consecutive deaths. I don't think the latter issue is going to come up as much for the guy LK is describing, but it seems worth pointing out. Any method used to track this is likely to be flawed but it may still be worth trying.
Of those three, number two is the only one currently used because it's the only one that works. Some people spend a lot of souls just collecting things, many of the best weapons aren't purchasable, and different types of weapons require different numbers of souls to upgrade. Additionally, there's no way to only take into account what the player actually has equipped unless you don't allow them to change equipment after the connection starts (which would break the game more or less), and penalizing people who upgrade multiple weapons just introduces another way for people to keep their "matchmaking level" low while using powerful gear.
If you need help you can gold up and it'll probably take me an hour or so to get in range, but I won't be able to start till 9pm est. But, there may well be summon signs for you if you do gold up. Before then, try to run up the stairs, take the dogs out, then focus on Capra. Try and get a shield with as much stability as possible.
What is gold up? Anyway, I'm on now (PC XBL LIZRDKNG) if you need a hand, currently level 33 and climbing rapidly but I have other choices on the table as well. Also, that same level 33 has been running around with 10+ humanity for much of the game, and as a result I now have a second large club. I forget who it was that wanted one earlier and couldn't get it, but you're welcome to it.
Oh my god me please. Edit: whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat it just dropped for me for the first time ever. I wonder if they bumped up the drop rate in this patch. Edit: yeah just got another one. I've killed I'm going to say well over a hundred of those guys and never gotten one, and I just killed five and got the drop twice. So yeah I'm going to say the Large Club is much more common now. Not that that's a complaint; it's a fundamental weapon for a strength build, it should be relatively easy to get.
After hearing you guys talk about how awesome the large club was, I went hunting for it with my strength character. Only when it dropped did I realise I already had one.
Yes, I'm aware that I'm ruining the experience for myself. I haven't had or needed Gold for a while now. It's Christmas and my bank account has been drained enough for one season. Perhaps after the New Year.
For crying out loud. I did a little bit of exploring, found some armor, came back, and took out Capra in one easy go. Eesh. Also murdered that dragon that killed me in the first go around. Amazing what a little poison resistance will do for you.
They've definitely done sumfink to the drop rates - one trek through Undead Parish and back hollow at 0 humanity netted me: 4 titanite shards 3 hollow soldier shields 1 rapier followed by a speedy romp (ahaha) through Sen's which gave me a Man-Serpent Greatsword from the second Man-Serpent Warrior upstairs. Basically, I got more drops from one hour than from most days. Again, this is hollow at 0 humanity and no rings. Must be Christmas.
Lemme tell you a little something about drop rates. 10+ humanity. Covetous gold ring. And the pursuit of the arms/head of the hollow thief set. Results: Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 bandit's knives. 1 hood. So I guess I win, but jesus christ.
Well, this seemed to work. I was successfully summoned this morning for the first time in ages. Thanks!
That may also be a consequence of the patch, so it's hard to say, but I'm glad you're up and running. If anyone gets a 5 green shards drop from the leeches in Blight Town post-patch, let me know. It's raining large shards but nothing else.
I got a crazy amount of drops there last night - one was green shards. I also got 2 Painting Guardian swords in my one trek to the painting - I've never got one before. Sadly, this was my Str build so they'll be of no use.
The Gaping Dragon has one of the best intros I've ever seen in a video game. Pity he was so easy to defeat. The Stray Demon, on the other hand...
Great, thanks. It's possible that by maxing my item find I was tilting more in the direction of large titanite, but who knows. Fun fact: you can farm them easily with a lightning bolt into the water.
Yep. I think that works with any body of water for normal enemies. Probably not for the hydras though?
Apologies in advance for the big screenshots. This happened outside Kalameet, twice, while waiting for Charles: I see what looks like some armor up status icon, but don't know what happened or why. However, after the second time this happened (note durability): WTF is going on? Had to spend 1,000 souls to fix it.
That's the secondary-attack function of Havel's Greatshield. Gives you tonsapoise and damage resistance. Think of it like a spiky Iron Flesh.
Good to know, and makes sense, except for the fact that I don't remember doing an L2 while waiting. Weird.
